There really is no official season for music festivals. There’s Coachella in April and Lollapalooza in August. There are metal fests in the fall and jazz in the spring. All summer long, there is always some multi-band mega tour happening somewhere in the world.
The one thing all of these have in common is, as my old daddy used to say, “They are too rich for my blood.”
Concert tickets have gotten insanely expensive, not to mention the cost of these festivals. Coachella, for example, ranges from about $500 (general admission) to more than $1,000 (VIP) for the weekend just for the passes alone. Lollapalooza can be even more hefty.
I won’t get into the reasons tickets are so expensive right now, but I know not everyone is able to truck on down to the California desert… or to Chicago in the summer. Or any other place where there’s something big happening in the music world.
I really find this disheartening, because being surrounded by live music is one of my favorite things, and it has been since my dad took me to my first concert at age nine. Yet, when money is tight, and the performers we love tend to schedule miles and miles and miles away, I am not always able to share these same live music moments with my own family. I have to rely on good old television or movie screens.
Last year, Coachella did one thing right for us music fans lacking resources and travel time: they started live-streaming several stages from both weekends on YouTube so we could watch our favorite acts. These don’t stay up very long after the fact, but they do keep a few highlights circulating, like a song from this past weekend’s Hatsune Miku concert!
There are also different Lollapalooza festivals around the world, and sometimes you can find a full performance of a favorite act, including several official ones put out by the artists and their companies. If you didn’t catch J-Hope in 2022, you still can thanks to the BangtanTV channel.
Still, you are basically watching from home. In order to make it seem more like an actual concert (as much as we can), we do three simple things in our family:
We make concert snacks.
I’m actually a little weird about live music as opposed to, say, a movie. I don’t want to be hanging onto any food or sticky drinks when the crowd starts bounding around. Yet, our crowd is limited to our immediate family, a handful of pets, and the occasional guests. Snacks are welcome in this case. People make snacks for sports events and family movie nights. Why not go a little over-the-top with something geared towards the concerts? Thanks to social media (and the First We Feast YouTube Channel), my girls know what some of their performers’ favorite treats are. Then, we prepare accordingly.
We decorate.
Concerts are immersive, so restricting something to just a screen in front of you feels a little bit lacking. Put up some banners or posters and make it seem like an event. I could go into more details, but really, if you love a band you likely have some small merch to put up. If you love K-Pop, there’s plenty of read-to-go merch in each album from posters to photo cards. If you don’t have some, print something out or draw something. Treat it like a pep rally!
Of course, if you’re making things, who stops there…
We make props.
Seasoned concertgoers know props let themselves be part of the performance, not just an observers. Old school concerts used lighters, then they went to glow sticks, light sticks, beach balls, balloons, and more. Many people bring their own signs and other items from home (provided these things are allowed in the venue). At home, make your own, as well. Last week, before the big ATEEZ, concert, ATINYs (ATEEZ fans), posted images of their bias’s photo card along with a picture of their light sticks in front of the countdown to the performance. This served as a big rallying cry that we were all ready for the show. Since Coachella runs over two weekends, we also made a fan prop seen from last week’s performance as a little something extra the next weekend.
We might be stuck far away from our favorite performances, but that doesn’t mean we have to keep things boring.
Watching from home via streaming or a DVD can never completely replicate the thrill you get from being surrounded by the sounds of live music. At least streaming events and special movie events are giving us a chance to see and enjoy them.
